Mitropa Cup

The first major international cup for club teams, an idea of the Austrian
Hugo Meisl. (The Challenge Cup,
played between 1897 and 1911 and open to teams from the Hapsburg Empire,
can be seen as a fore-runner.)

The decision to organise an international club competition
was taken on July 16 and 17, 1927 in Venice, Italy, and the first matches
were played on August 14 of the same year.

More or less simultaneously, a competition for national teams was
introduced, the
Coupe Internationale européenne
(known in English as International Cup; the sixth and final edition was
played for the Dr. Gerö Cup), which can be considered a predecessor of
the European Championship.

In the first two seasons, two teams each from Hungary, Austria,
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia entered; in 1929 the Yugoslav sides were
replaced by Italian ones. After an initial discussion to reorganise
the competition into a league (an idea eventually rejected due to
scheduling problems), participation was extended in 1934 to four entrants of
each of the four countries; in 1936 four teams from Switzerland were admitted
(all eliminated in a preliminary round), and in 1937 clubs from Romania,
Switzerland and Yugoslavia entered the competition, with no country having
more than 3 entrants; after the Anschluß of Austria to Germany in 1938,
no clubs from there entered and the other three major countries entered four
teams again. The last edition, in 1939, only had 8 teams again (two of the
big three and one each from Romania and Yugoslavia). An edition in 1940
was started but abandoned due to World War II.

Austria, Italy, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia were undoubtedly the strongest
countries in continental Europe in the late twenties and thirties, and the
first to introduce professional football on the continent (Austria 1924,
Czechoslovakia 1925, Hungary 1926). The Cup therefore carried a prestige
only comparable with the Champions' Cup
of later decades.

After the second World War, the cup was resumed (including unofficial editions
in 1951 and 1958), but never reached its former
status again, mainly because of the advent of the Champions' Cup and other
European club competitions. Vasas of Budapest deserve some mention for
winning it six times between 1956 and 1983. In the eighties entrance for
a while was given to the second division champions of the participating
countries, which led to Milan AC picking up the trophy in 1982. By then,
the tournament had lost all credibility and tended to be hosted by mediocre
Italian sides in an attempt to embellish their palmares. After this went
wrong for Foggia in 1992, it has not been played any more - only partially
due to the violent conflicts in former Yugoslavia.

Since 1991 an Amateur-Mitropacup is being
played in the border region of Austria, Hungary and Slovakia.

Countrywise list of winners

Prewar (1927-39)

Austria 4
Hungary 4
Czechoslovakia 3
Italy 2

Total (1927-92)

Hungary 16
Italy 11
Czechoslovakia 8
Austria 7
Yugoslavia 7 [*]
[*] this includes Borac Banja Luka's win in 1992; Banja Luka is in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
which proclaimed independence several weeks before the 1992 tournament and gained
admission to the United Nations one week before Borac claimed the trophy, but as
the club remained under the ("remainder of") Yugoslavia league structure in the
1992/93 season (they entered the inaugural championship of the "Republik Srpska"
in the 1995/96 season) it would appear reasonable to include their win under
Yugoslavia.